Hi everybody,
I'm a new member of the forum, and it is my pleasure to meet so many people who are in love with literature like I do. Unfortunately, I don't have a writing tallent like any of you guys here, but I still try my best. This is my first short story I have ever written, even though I have been wanting to write for a while. I hope you all will enjoy it, and hopefull I can get a lot of feedback from you guys. Bests.
Chapter 1
He is bored. He is starring at his laptop screen, typing something that he does not even know. In front of him is Abigail, obnoxious as usual. She is sitting on the on the couch, stretching and “chewing” potato chips. “When is she going to swallow that thing in her mouth?” he thinks. Oh no, here she goes again. Abigail is doing what she is best at doing: talking loudly and absurdly, and in the office too. No respect for people what so ever. Oh wait, does she even know what “respect” mean? He looks over to his left, and shrugs. Joseph is talking to his girlfriend, Jelly Beans, and flirts with Lila at the same time. It makes absolute no sense. He does not get it, or at least Jelly Beans does not get it. He keeps typing and looking around the small room. Hey, Jolly is waving at him, and winking too. Yuck. Hypocrite. Who the hell she thinks she is? Arrogant and hysterical, all the damn time. She thinks she is the best secretary in the entire the universe (the Oodwoak universe that is). He pauses. He forgets how long he has been working at Oodwoak. Five, six years perhaps? His eyes stop at Jasmine, and his heart too. She is so beautiful, so beautiful that he thought she was an archangel when they first met. Well, she was not “on the market” when they first met. She was with this rich and egotistical son-of-the-boss of the mother company, and they were nothing but an odd couple. “Of course it was not Jasmine’s fault!” he states it in his computer, and he was so proud of himself for being so generous. He felt like he is a supreme God forgiving his believer, and so he awarded himself with a cup of coffee. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Oh my goodness, Jasmine is looking at him. No, she is smiling at him. He wants to double his coffee too make sure that he is not dreaming. She is actually looking and smiling at him. After a split moment of thinking, he decides to turn away. “A real man should never have any affair with a ‘claimed rose’” or so he was taught. His heart tells him to smile back, but his brain tells him to zip his mouth and go make coffee. What is he going to do? Does God (or whoever is up there) know how to get out of this situation? Well, at least the phone does it job, and it gets him out of his predicament beautifully. It rings.
Chapter 2
“You have to be kidding me!” he curses into the air. Everybody in the office turns around and looks at him. They think he is crazy. Of course he is crazy. Who wouldn’t be if they were put in a room of 96 degree with no AC. He does not even bother that Jasmine is looking bewilder at him. “I have the right to remain silent, but I also have the right to… explode when I cannot stand the temperature. Any question?” He walks over to the corner of the room and opens the windows. That does not work either. There is no wind, only the annoying sunlight. He hates everybody now. He starts cursing at random things, even at his poor laptop. Nobody even cares. Actually, no. They do care. They are just too tired to yell at him. That is what the summer heat does: blow you up or wear you out. That’s it. Everything in this office of damnation needed to be changed, but the first thing to do is to install an AC. No, that isn’t correct. There is an AC in the room. It just doesn’t work. He still remembers what happened to the poor old thing. It was a Friday afternoon, 87 degree outside. Inside the office was 60 degree, thanked to the wonderful machine that was working tirelessly… until Jolly found a bee on her binder. And of course she would freak out, being a drama queen herself. Ironically, it seemed like the bee was freaked about by her. It didn’t know what to do, so it just tried to fly away from the “danger zone”. So it settled itself on top of our Toshiba (the AC it was), expected to stay far away from the fire. Well, it wasn’t far enough for Jolly’s fire. She grabbed the gigantic stable and threw at her “enemy”. For sure she missed the bee, but unfortunately, she didn’t miss the innocent air conditioner. The result? The bee went back to its home safely and everybody suffered in the above eighty degree room. “Good old memory” he grins. Five minutes later, he smashes his laptop, his table, his chair and anything else he sees on his way to the door. He knows what he is going to do. He will get an AC from Best Buy and put it in the office. There we are, the problem is solved. Well, not when Jolly is waiting at the gate and asking to come with him. “Life sucks” he concludes and faints. All the last images that he remembers are his blue car, the “lovely” face of Jolly, and his landlord’s words: “Must be the heat. We need to get a new AC soon”.
Chapter 3
Three more weeks and the summer vacation will knock on the door. He knows exactly what he is going to do. He will travel. By himself. To Denmark, Sweden and England. He wants to get the hell out of San Francisco and visit places that he hopes will help him to forget about Jasmine.
- “What are you doing this summer?” she asks him 2 weeks ago.
- “Nothing for sure. Probably just hanging around here. You?”
He was shocked. Jasmine actually talked to him. And she even mentioned the summer. My goodness, she might want to spend her summer vacation with him. Behold, rich kid had belonged to the pass. Now it was time for him to shine.
- “I want you to invite you to my wedding. It will be on the day of our summer vacation so we won’t miss any work. What do you think?”
He thought nothing. He got a black out. He had never been stricken by lightning, nor had he been shot in the head. But even if those two things combined and hit him at once, they would be nothing compared to what he was going through right now. Crashed. Marry? To the rich son-of-the-boss? He wanted to faint, but it wasn’t hot enough. He couldn’t answer Jasmine, although she had been standing for quite a while waiting for his response. It seemed like something was stuck between his jaw and he couldn’t open his mouth now. Why didn’t the goddamned phone ring when it needed to? He had never believed in God, but now he believed in anything that could help him to say something. That “anything” was Jasmine. She didn’t actually help him. She just left.
Chapter 4
He gets waken up by the flight attendance’s announcement. He just left Sweden and he is in England now. He stretches and looks around. Everybody seems happy. A couple is having the little romantic moment, and for a moment he thought they were Jasmine and the rich son-of-…,no, Jasmine and her husband. He feels some sweats in his eyes. Are they sweats? Or… He walks out of the airport into at busy street. “Perfect” he thinks “Goodbye San Francisco, goodbye Jasmine! I will see you in December”. It is May now. The taxi driver turns around and asks him in a strong English accent:
- “Where do you want to go, sir?”
- “The least romantic place in London” – he insists.
- “There is no such place like that in London sir”. The driver replies.
- “What do you mean?” He asks in surprise. Before he came, he thought a place like London, where nothing but fog exists, would be a place for losers like him.
- “Every place in this universe is the most romantic place, as soon as the heart of human is still beating and love still exists”.
He shivers. He stays in London for a week, and takes the next plane back to San Francisco. He wants to get back to his office. He wants to get crazy in the room with no AC. He misses everything that is going on in there. Everybody thought he would never come back. He did come back. It was June.
GoldenCarcajou
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